Ilie Ilascu: Vladimir Putin ordered and Igor Smirnov executed
Moldovan media on the Transnistrian conflict ten years ago....
"It is true that Russia put pressure on Transnistria to liberate me ... But if Romania would not have dealt with this issue after I became citizen of Romania, Russia would not have cared about me even today. The fact that I was released on May 5th, 2001 - World Press Freedom Day, I consider as a day when [Russian president Vladimir] Putin ordered, and [Transnistrian leader Igor] Smirnov executed. Everything else does not matter", Ilie Ilascu declared in an interview published by FLUX newspaper on Friday, May 11, 2001.
Ilie Ilascu, a Moldovan-born Romanian politician and an ex-political prisoner sentenced to death by the separatist Transnistrian regime, mentioned that he is only "half" free, because his other three comrades continue to be in detention. "I can say that I was taken as a sack, thrown into the car and driven away. I could even ask them to leave me in prison, but they were ordered to do what they did", Ilascu stated. He believes that the life of the other three comrades will not be in danger, in Chisinau, because they "were passengers which woke up in my train of tortures. The aggression was oriented against the [Moldova's] People's Front and me. That is why I was the target of the strikes, even if they were tortured as well".
Solicited to mention if former presidents Mircea Snegur and Petru Lucinschi made sufficient efforts to release him, Ilascu said that "it was not wanted". According to him, the Ilascu problem is only a segment in the whole Transnistrian issue, but Lucinschi and Snegur did not solve even the other problems from this variety. "Presidents of the Republic of Moldova and Russian forces only made publicity on my case", Ilascu said. Asked if he will interfere, in Bucharest, about the issues on securing the frontiers with the Republic of Moldova or other main issues regarding the attitude towards Bessarabia, Ilascu said that he is citizen of Romania and will obey the laws of the country and that he will do everything possible, only legally, to support Bessarabia. In another connection, Ilascu said that his father died when he tried to escape, and later being transported from Hlinaia to Tiraspol.
Ilie Ilascu spent 9 years in a Tiraspol jail on charges of committing terror acts during the 1992 armed conflict between Russia's 14th army in Transnistria and the new formed Republic of Moldova ...
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